Robbie Swinnerton serves up morsels from the foodiest city on the planet

dessert

12/26/2015

December 2015: After a prolonged (4-year) stay of execution, the wonderful Omotesando Koffee is due to finally close its doors at the end of the month. That leaves only a few more days to revisit – or discover for the first time – this modern/retro Tokyo classic.

This was my original post from September 2011…

We dropped into Omotesando Koffee over the weekend and loved it. Not that it's the kind of place you'd stumble upon by chance in the grid of residential streets that lie between Omotesando and Gaienmae.

But it's really worth tracking down. Because it's a contemporary classic. You enter through an old-style gateway, into a neat little manicured garden...

And in the middle of that room is the counter and gleaming red/silver espresso machine, all 'enclosed' in an open cuboid frame of black steel.

Owner Eiichi Kunitomo is a trained barista, and perfected his technique while living in Ischia (Tyrrhenian Sea / Gulf of Naples) for a while. An Osaka native, he says he'd love to take this idea down to Kansai, but it's way behind Tokyo in terms of espresso culture.

He also cooks what he calls his koffee kashi (sweets). He describes them as baked custard, but essentially they're canelés – dark and slightly caramel bitter on the outside, nice and moist and yellow inside – which he cooks in cute little cubes in a diminutive oven hidden in a side alcove...

You can buy them singly to have with your coffee, or in stylishly packaged sets of five to take home with you...

And that's it. You stand at the counter while he prepares your coffee. Then when it's ready and dispensed into its cardboard cup, you nurse it standing on the side of the room or retreat to one of the benches in the garden (or carry it back to your office/apartment).

There's just one downside to Omotesando Koffee: it's temporary – and the clock is ticking down. Kunitomo only has this space until the end of the year (when the house is due to be demolished). At least that was the initial arrangment with the owner/landlord. However, there has been such a strong buzz about the place that the owner's agreed to let it continue into next year – and possibly even longer. We've got our fingers crossed...

But even if that does happen, then Kunitomo will just take his coffee machine, his kashi oven and his counter (and that striking steel frame) and find another location.

That's the beauty of his concept – it can be taken anywhere. And if you look at his web site, you can see the list of places where he envisages setting up more of his minimalist coffee shops.

UPDATE (June 2013): Another coffee shop that is based on a very similar template to Omotesando Koffee -- thanks to Kunitomo's involvement as producer -- is Café Kitsuné, which opened earlier this year. The menu and style is very similar, with the same cuboid Kashi canelés and a similar blend of old and traditional.

The dessert plate. Kawano knows who his clientele is: this was intended to be shared between two. And that kawaii little snowman — actually a whole grape, with a big blob of cream for the head — was really good!

And the lady who's always half smiling — the lady who inspired it all for Kawano…

09/13/2012

Following up on my new monthly column on desserts and sweets, which debuted last Friday in The Japan Times – it's cutely entitled Sweet Inspirations – here are a few examples of classic flavored "soft cream" (that's the Japanese term for soft-serve ice cream) from around town… starting naturally with matcha:

This one is from the green tea specialist shop inside Solamachi, the mall at the foot of the new Tokyo Sky Tree. It's also available as a sundae, garnished with sweet azuki jam, of course — which you can eat with a special Sky Tree spoon.

Beni-imo is a variety of sweet potato found in Okinawa that is reputed to impart great health benefits along with its dramatic mauve colour. This store is in the arcade close to Sensoji temple in Asakusa.

If you're a chocoholic, Cacao Sampaka will need no introduction. The Tokyo outlet is in Brick Square, just around the corner from the Joel Robuchon bakery/cafe and the Echiré butter boutique. The actual soft cream is far darker and satisfyingly chocolate-rich than you would guess from the outsize model on the sidewalk outside the store.

I've already introduced the coffee soft cream at Binya — but there's no harm in revisiting this tasty treat…

One last item, and it's a bit of a novelty: soymilk. This kiosk inside the labyrinth that is Shibuya JR station serves all kinds of desserts with soymilk – including a soft cream.

What's it taste like? Just look at the name over the top.

Surprisingly, there's very little tradition of using soymilk — tonyu, in Japanese — in Japan, other than for making tofu and yuba. This brand and its recipes apparently come from Singapore.

06/18/2012

This is where the Takazawa experience starts: a nondescript side street in Akasaka; a glowing white illuminated doorway framing a sleek glass door (up until May it used to be plain metal, which added even more to the mystique of not knowing what lay inside); a flight of stairs, the handrail also illuminated, a glowing poem leading you upward…

...into the small square dining room, so precisely illuminated you could be in a high-end art gallery. The official photo (below) is misleading as it suggests there are four tables. In fact Takazawa only serves three parties per evening, with a maximum of ten people.

Three walls are lined with wood paneling; the fourth holds an imposing counter of polished steel. This is Takazawa’s front kitchen. Part laboratory, part stage, he performs his alchemy here each evening, putting the final touches to the elaborate succession of courses that make up his extended banquets...

Besides the new name on the front panel (before it said Aronia de...), Takazawa has made some additions to his workspace. He now has a charcoal grill on top, in front of the teppan — adding another, more traditional facet to the test-tubes, liquid nitrogen and blow torches that have long been his contemporary stock in trade.

That, then, is the setting. From here on, it's all about the food. Starting with the menu. This is customized for each party, meaning we did not have exactly the same as what the other table got. Only a couple of the courses (out of 11) I'd been served before — Takazawa keeps a record of what he's served each customer on past visits — and most of the dishes were new, introduced this year.

[click on images to enlarge]

Before we even embarked on the first course, we were served a series of amuse-bouches. Starting with a mouthful of warm soup — cream of cauliflower to be precise — served in spherified form, topped with slices of white truffle. Tip it all into your mouth in one go, we were told. A very nice combination of smooth and crunchy, stimulating the taste buds and gastric juices...

…followed by a crisp umami-rich roll of konbu seaweed coated with dried seafood: tiny shrimp, chirimen jako (tiny whole anchovies) etc. This senbei-like snack called for a beer or, even better, sake. But it also went just fine with our aperitif bubbly.

And as a third starter, a miniature plant pot in which delicate young herbs were planted in edible "earth," a miso-sesame mayonnaise topped with crispy savoury bread crumbs. The herbs were chervil and mizuna, both in flower (quite unusual both of them) and with them there was a sliver of kabu turnip little larger than a matchstick. Cute, yes, but also appetising, just as they were supposed to be. Like many of the vegetables Takazawa serves, these herbs came from the market farmers of Kamakura.

The meal proper started with Takazawa's signature Ratatouille — which is actually a terrine of vegetables in a multicolored mosaic. Each of the vegetables is prepared in different styles: steamed, simmered, sauteed, raw, pressed. The outside wrapping is red cabbage, blanched and lightly vinegared to hold the color. As seasoning, it's served with a single salted black bean (Chinese-style doubanjiang) and a small crystal of salt. Again this is intended as a "one-mounthful" experience — though it's quite a large portion for those with small mouths...

Before the next course arrived: home-made bread, baked with matcha tea and whole kuromame (Japanese black beans), warm from the charcoal grill and served with a small pot of smooth pork rillettes.

Course 2 was the Vegetable Parfait, as featured in my post the other day. The base was a gazpacho of fruit tomato; the next layer was a parmesan cream with swirls of basil oil; and on top there were minute whole tomatoes, baby leaves, colourful petals and a scoop of caviar. The "wafer" was crisp black cabbage, slightly salty and oiled (in the way that sheets of Korean nori are). A shame to stir it all up, really, but so good you want to suck up the very last drops — straws are provided.

Here's that overhead shot again (in all its grainy glory)...

Course 3: Sea.

We were each served a rock-pool selection of percebes barnacles (from northern Kyoto); a tiny pink crab, crunchy but easily eaten whole; tender sashimi cuts of hon-mirugai clam; a single shiro-hamaguri clam cooked in an ayu-based fish sauce (from Oita); a few shirauo whitebait; and strands of crunchy Okinawan umi-budō seaweed, on a light scattering of "sand" made from powdered sakura-ebi shrimp.

But that wasn't all. A long platter was placed in the center of the table, holding even more seafood — firm but tender abalone flesh, and also its liver, dark and intense; scoops of orange uni urchin; mounds of soft white crab meat; small sazae turban shells; green and red seaweed — all set into an ocean of clear jellied dashi stock and accented with lemon foam.

Now it really was time for some sake: Yuki-no-bijin, a crisp tasty junmai ginjo from Akita.

Course 4: In my personal mental shorthand, I've given this dish a subtitle: Taste of White. On the actual menu, though, the name is prosaic, albeit descriptive: Powdery Dressing. A variety of white vegetables — lotus root; udo stem; cauliflower; daikon; burdock; white asparagus; slivers of blanched ginger; plus guinea fowl breast and also white liver. Even the sweet corn was whiter than it looks in the photo...

The dressing scattered over the top was also white, but in nitro-chilled powder form. It melted to dress the dish with sunflower oil and vinegar. Ultimately, though, this was the weakest of the courses, the least memorable despite the impressive fuming of the dressing as it deliquesced.

Course 5: Next was a "special energy" soup, aka Takazawa Gold. The creamy soup combined the beneficial extracts of asparagus and suppon turtle — reputed to give great vigour in all departments, especially from the debilitation of the summer heat.

Along with the soup, we were also presented with a deepfried croquette of suppon meat and a single green asparagus deep-fried in a crispy crust of black crouton crumbs.

We were shown samples (uncooked) of the purple asparagus used in the soup recipe. Impressive. Unfortunately, in the cooking process all the purple hue is lost and the finished soup comes out green. Like the deep-fried green asparagus (above) and the white ones in the previous dish, these are all grown in Hokkaido.

Next up (lost count of the courses for now), Salt. It's not about the fish or the broad beans or the end of season sansai (fuki-no-to and yama-udo leaves), it's the colourful microdots of seasoned salt that define this dish. From left to right: plain; sakura; matcha; turmeric.

Nonetheless, the whole young ayu sweetfish was outstanding. And the tempura batter even lighter than in previous incarnations. Another of the highlights.

Course 7: Carbonara. Not that there was any pasta involved. No mirrors, but a nice touch with the smoke inside those globes!

Strands of wild green asparagus (French); a beautiful poached egg with firm soft white and rich golden yolk – from hens farmed free-range in the highlands of Yatsugatake (Nagano). Topped with slivers of crunchy summer truffle (again) and a sprinkle of grated parmesan for extra umami goodness, this had a great balance of flavours and textures.

Course 8: The Feast from Hokkaido — aka the seafood course.

Amadai, pan-fried in the classic Japanese style, the soft white flesh contrasting with the scales all crisped up. A whole botan-ebi prawn. A slice of green asparagus (yes, again) and fine-slivered fuki stem. As the name suggests, all the ingredients are sourced from Hokkaido. Excellent.

Course 9: Arabesque, the meat course. This looked great, that vibrant green against that handsome matte ceramic platter. And in terms of flavour, it was great. Three large juicy cubes of wagyu (from Saga), nicely rare and topped with kinome sprigs and capers, on a swoosh of green sauce (peppery kinome leaves blended into white miso). More curlicues were provided by the slivers of green asparagus (yes, once again) and mangetout peas. That beef was outstanding!

Course 10: Mimosa. And then it was time for the first desert. This was a light "cocktail" of citrus topped with champagne bubbles. Nice. Refreshing on the palate.

Course 11: Stone Pavement, a beautifully composed dessert that was really excellent. The image is of a narrow backstreet in Kyoto, its paving stones represented by crunchy morsels of almond. There are "wells" (or are they ponds?) of kuromitsu syrup, and a sprinkling of matcha green tea to evoke moss. A scoop of ice cream. And a wedge of cheesecake infused with lime, reinvigorating the taste buds.

Definitely worthy of a close-up...

To round off a remarkable four hours at the table, we were given a tray of small post-dessert goodies to go with our tea (there's also a selection of herbal infusions): a pig-shaped cookie cutely inscribed with the word "buta" (Japanese for "pig"); a miniature block of intense dark chocolate; a honeycomb-like wedge of candy; and a small square of nougat lightly flecked with red umeboshi, hinting of tartness (and aiding our digestion).

So we ended, as we began, on a more Western note. It was a considerable banquet, full of surprises, creative highs, and occasional dips in intensity but always stimulating. The choreography of the cuisine; the cocoon-like quiet and isolation of the dining room; and the very personal level of attention from Chef Takazawa's wife, Akiko, both before and during the meal: there is nowhere else in Tokyo quite like it.

Takazawa offers three menus: ¥20,000 (9 courses); ¥24,000 (11 courses; the meal described above); or ¥30,000 (also 11 courses, but with more expensive ingredients). However, the exact composition/number of dishes is not written in stone, and can be discussed and adjusted (for example, you might want fewer courses or a particular dish).

Note that service charge and tax are not included in those prices, which bumps up the bill further.

05/05/2012

Does Nirvanam serve the very best Indian food in Tokyo? Well it's definitely up there, especially if you like those aromatic South Indian flavours as much as I do. The full story was in my Japan Times column yesterday, along with some excellent photos by the JT cameraman (thanks, Miura-san!). Here are a few of my rather grainier images from a light dinner there last week.

Starting with the Set Dosa, a tray with two thick fluffy rice-flour "hotcakes" with great dips to go with them.

Think of the parippu vada as crisper, slightly larger versions of falafels, except they're made with yellow split peas rather than chickpeas. And they come with a delicate minty-yogurt sauce (rather than tahini). A bit dry on their own, but just right with a Kingfisher beer or two.

The Roast Fish is one of our favourites. As described, the chunks of whitemeat fish are coated in a spicy marinade, then cooked and served with a sauce well spiced with plenty of small, fiery red chilies and other aromatics, along with fresh green kari leaf and a good sprinkling of cashew nuts.

The main event for us that evening was an excellent mutton curry in the Andhra Pradesh style...

…which went perfectly with the string hoppers.

The desserts are (apart from the "mango delight") just as authentic — this one below is the payasam. Mind you, the chai is so teeth-achingly sugared up you really don't need anything else sweet.

The Nirvanam home page is here... Curiously though, although it has maps to both its branches, I couldn't see a phone number anywhere. It is: (03) 3433-1217.

It's definitely a good idea to phone ahead. And even if they say they're fully booked, they usually have some tables open at the beginning of the evening (say, until 8 pm).